IKEA store attracts 40,000 customers on first day

Hyderabad, (IANS) About 40,000 people visited IKEA’s first India store on its opening day here, a company spokesperson told IANS.
The world’s leading Swedish home furnishings retailer received huge response from customers on Thursday.
“With a huge crowd from across the city thronging the store in the evening, the IKEA staff found it a bit challenging to regulate the entry. There were also a few tense moments when some people tried breaking queues,” store manager John Achillea said.
As the sprawling store has come up in the heart of Hyderabad Information Technology and Engineering Consultancy City (HITEC), majority of the customers were techies.
The 400,000 sq.ft store offers 7,500 products, including 1,000 products priced below Rs 200.
It also has a 1,000-seater restaurant, which is the biggest for IKEA in its global network, offering Swedish and Indian cuisine.
The first India store of IKEA was opened with an investment of Rs 1,000 crore, five years after it received the government approval in 2013 to invest Rs 10,500 crore to open 25 stores in India by 2025.
IKEA’s next store will open in Navi Mumbai in 2019, followed by Bengaluru and Delhi. In the next phase, IKEA would cover Ahmedabad, Surat, Pune, Chennai and Kolkata.